KITCHEN DEMOLITION

Today, Arthur, I am a one-woman kitchen demolition squad!

Who’s Arthur? Oh him. That’s my imaginary friend Arthur Job. He always turns up when you least expect him to derail any good intentions you have to get stuff done. I’m sure you probably know him too. There’s always that one bit on a project you never quite finish ie ‘arf a job’. Enough said.

January always seems much longer than its thirty-one days so to kill a bit of time and get a head start on this year’s extension/kitchen refurb project, I’ve dug out my DIY garb and gotten stuck into some good old fashioned kitchen gutting. I'm loving it!

It's all got to go

to make way for better things

I’ve been itching to take a chisel to those awful 70’s style tiles. Today’s the day they finally got hacked off the wall.

Bye, bye hideous tiles

Take care when removing tiles

A word of advice for anyone thinking of doing the same, please don’t do like me – wear proper safety glasses and gloves. Tile shards are very sharp and at a flick of the chisel, can easily end up in your eyes.

Living dangerously with no PPE

Those dreadful dirty white wall units are also being given the heave ho.

Getting rid of the wall hung units

I love demolition work!

I’ve had to literally rip some of these cabinets off the wall, the screws were in that tight. Whoever put them up obviously didn’t mean for them to come down again. Definitely earthquake proof!

But down they are, temporarily stacked in the lounge and on the work tops until such time as a new kitchen is fitted.

Wall units removed

Stacked on the worktop for temporary use

Just when I thought my steamy love affair was over, it’s back on for another bout of paper stripping.

Darling, you're back in my life!

It was my bad luck to find that the bodgers had been at it again, applying a second layer of anaglypta type wallpaper on top of the original woodchip instead of steaming off the first lot and starting afresh. Argh!

Pulling off the top layer of wallpaper from the ceiling

That’s where Arthur comes in as it’s going to take a whole day of sloshing Zinsser solution onto the ceiling in order to strip this lot off. Yippee! I’ll think we’ll leave that bit for another time, don’t you?

Cat turd or cocktail sausage? What you find behind freezers

There was enough hammering, steaming, kettle boiling and cursing loud enough to wake the dead or provoke a polite knock on the wall from next door but despite the noise, Blackie, the neighbourhood timeshare cat, slept through everything.

Can you hear anything?

The kitchen, like our lounge/diner is now sporting the very latest in that just demolished, condemned factory décor but is ready for the next phase of the refurb. Well, almost!